PNW

I think I finally love it here.

I've decided to become a climber instead of a skier. I'll let ya'll know how it goes!

Life, a fatal human condition

I heard an amazing talk yesterday by Charles Sabine. He emphatically drove home the point that we are all fragile, our health is not something to be taken lightly, and that we have the power and ability to change the world around us. He pointed to HIV/AIDS as an example of a social movement leading to huge medical advances. HIV/AIDS is no longer the fatal sentence it once was and we should take that movement as a lesson for other diseases.

Since starting grad school I have seen talks by amazing scientists doing incredible work. I have been settled into my lab ready to do incredible work, only to stall out at the day-to-day tedium of taking care of my cells and troubleshooting my assays. I have started to question what I'm doing here and what I'll be able to do when I get out (the bigger question being "if" I ever get out). I've been terrified of this path into science knowing the longer I stay here the harder it will be to leave. At the very least, I'm certainly not studying myself out of a job.  It has been too easy to lose sight of the bigger picture of what my project will accomplish.

So it was refreshing to see a patient reach out to us, a patient who's just any other person in this world, reminding us why we do the work that we do. Saying, "All humans are capable of far more than they could ever believe."

Seattleites

Saw a fox on my way to work. Oh Seattle, even with the rain you find some way to make me smile.